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Life at the Intersection.

What fascinates me about people who insist the Second Amendment gives them a right to bear military weapons at brunch is how often they ignore what arms meant. Or the bit about a well regulated militia. Or that a standing permanent military force was never intended to exist alongside that militia. The Second Amendment was written in the era of cannons, muskets & flintlock pistols. No one could have envisioned 300 round bursts, much less the 1200 to 1500 rounds a minute that early Tommy guns were capable of firing. I won’t even get into rocket launchers or grenades. Your right to bear arms was never intended for this level of weaponry.

Sensible gun control that recognizes the intent of the 2nd Amendment would limit the number & the capabilities of weapons in a home. The ship sailed on the US giving up guns decades ago. Okay I can accept that we won’t do as Australia did and surrender every weapon to a mass buyback. After all the US has 300 million guns, not the 3 million or so estimated to be in civilian hands in Australia. So, how about limiting the number per household & restricting the size of magazines nationwide?

That gives you the beginning of the well regulated part. We’re failing on that now. Okay great. Let’s talk about training and licensing and. Make buying a gun like getting a license to operate anything else that can be dangerous. 100 hours of classroom time. Regular evaluations. Require insurance & maintaining them like you would a car, boat, or plane. Start there. No one’s coming to take anyone’s guns without cause. Instead you have to prove you’re fit to have them in the first place. And that you’re fit to keep them. Make buying ammo harder than ordering it by the case online. We could mirror Australia’s gun laws easily enough and it wouldn’t infringe on the Second Amendment at all.

People keep pointing to violence in Chicago as though straw purchasers who can buy a trunk full of guns in Indiana, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Arkansas or Missouri and sell them on the streets here aren’t the source of that violence. Some 60% of guns used in crime here were bought legally in states with lax gun laws. The rest? Bought in rural Illinois. Or small town Illinois. Where gun stores are part of the mall. It’s not like Chicago gun laws matter in that environment. And despite the myths, areas with lax gun laws aren’t safer than Chicago or NY or LA. They’re just smaller.

If we’re talking about the Second & honoring it in word & intent? It’s time to federalize gun ownership regulations. No lax states allowed. We’d have a unified process for getting licensed, insured, and operating safely. We also wouldn’t pretend shootings are isolated incidents. The letter of the Second Amendment isn’t the problem here, it’s the fact that too many people want to use it so they can keep ignoring daily mass shootings

We know the red flags already for these incidents. History of domestic violence? No weapons for you for 5 years. Mandatory therapy & testing. Note, current law requires a conviction, but most cases of intimate partner violence don’t result in even misdemeanor convictions that would trigger the lifetime ban. For every “I would never give up my gun.” person spouting off? You’re part of the problem. You help normalize mass violence because you make it so easy for the tools to commit it to be accessed. Mass shooters are often wielding legally purchased firearms that they were able to stockpile along with ammo. It’s not their criminal history or lack thereof that predicts the future. Nor does the clean record theoretically required to own weapons in the US guarantee that someone won’t wake up one day and go out to attack their neighbors.

I don’t want the future where we treat mass shootings like a mold report on the news. “70% chance of death at the mall today, wear a vest”. Where we pretend that healthcare isn’t a right, but access to tools to murder kids is the price of freedom. None of us should want that future where we respond to these near daily incidents with “thoughts and prayers” instead of concrete effective action. And if you’re worried about the US military turning on the population…that would be a reason to change our military. Not buy 12 more guns. You should ask yourself why you are so fervently attached to laws that make it easier for mass shootings like Vegas or Orlando or Newtown to happen regularly. Ask why you value guns more than the lives of your kids or your friends or total strangers? Seriously, ask yourself that question. Because the answer should be “I don’t”

I know, I know it has been forever. In my defense…I have none really, except busy writing for other places and figuring some things out behind the scenes here. Hood Feminism is going to be a solo act going forward, and I have been working out how to handle that part. Still figuring it out to be honest, but I have some political thoughts on education and suddenly remembered I can rant and provide content! Win/win!

So, as we talk about school choice & vouchers and Betsy DeVos being spectacularly unqualified, I see more and more people pointing to “failing” public schools as proof that American ed needs a revolution. Invariably they point to lower test scores at schools with a 99% poverty rate and no social services left after 12 rounds of budget cuts. They skip right over stories about lead in schoolwaterfountains and in homes across the country. They pretend that school breakfast and lunch options are programs that “need” to be cut for the good of the children. Never mind the fact that hungry kids don’t learn, certainly don’t discuss the impact of poverty on students in public schools. Just cut funds for libraries, nurses, teachers, food, clean water, books, and then blame public education for low scores on tests that are fundamentally useless.

Meanwhile as a parent of two kids in public school, who went to public schools (Chicago Public Schools at that), I want some things out about how public education actually works when the funding is there and the kids can focus. It’s a ride, but let’s go.

I started public school at 3. There’s a whole story involving birth certificates that I won’t go into, but suffice to say I was a smart kid. I could read, do some basic math (shout out to PBS and the wonders of 321 Contact, Electric Company, and Sesame Street), I was also for a host of reasons what they called an “at-risk” kid. No father, lived with a grandparent, unstable living situations prior to that point…you know, I was slated to be one of those girls. A statistic that someone would insist could never succeed given my situation.

Except with access to quality public education I thrived. Lots of my old report cards talk about me not living up to my potential, but that was because I had C’s in the classes that didn’t interest me and A’s in the ones that did. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills in 3rd grade gave my school a clue on how to direct my talents. By 4th I was in Gifted & Talented classes and I was doing pretty well. My home life remained imperfect, my social skills could have been better, but suddenly the stories I wrote for myself at home had value. Because my teachers read them and my family had an idea that I wasn’t just a daydreamer. I went to K-12 in public schools. I joined the military to pay for college and went to a public university. I didn’t go to a private school until I got my Masters from DePaul and even that happened because they have a robust selection of evening and summer classes and the campus was next to my job in the Chicago federal building.

My husband is dyslexic. He started in a private Catholic school but they weren’t equipped to help him. Eventually his parents sent him to the local public school because by law they had to provide services. He went from not being able to read to being at the top of his class by the time he graduated from a public high school. We met in college, at a public university. We graduated together from the University of Illinois and now he’s the one at DePaul getting his MA. Neither of us ever considered sending our kids anywhere but public school.

My oldest son will graduate from a Chicago public high school in June. He will go to a public university in the fall, and much like his parents he will graduate in a few years and go on to follow his dreams. Because he had access to the same free public education that we did. Well not quite the same, see when I was a kid my school had a full time librarian, nurse, and a staff that cooked and cleaned to support the teachers, principal, and vice principal. Class sizes were small, between 20 and 25 kids on average. Art, music, gym and recess were standard. Afterschool and summer offerings were pretty robust, and I could choose between free options.

My husband is 4 years younger than me, and things had already begun to change by the time his parents transferred him into his public elementary school. The librarian was there part time. So was the nurse. Class sizes were closer to 30, he had gym and music but no art, and there were fewer support staff. He had summer options, though not as many as I did and many of the Gifted & Talented programs had already been cut. But still, he did well and his parents made up for the things that were no longer available.

Fast forward to our kids. My oldest still had recess and gym, but we had to pay for most of his access to art and music. His school had a library and a librarian, but that had a lot to do with PTA fundraising. His brother is at the same school and every year there’s a little more gone. The cuts outpace the fundraising now, and the class sizes in the high 20’s to low 30’s when my oldest was in school there, are now mid 30’s to just shy of 40. It would be 40, but the building is old and the fire codes for most of the rooms max out at 38.

My youngest has an IEP because he’s on the autism spectrum. He gets his services because well the law mandates them and he has the parental support needed to combat a system that is faltering under the weight of not enough money and too many people convinced that at risk kids don’t deserve a chance.

When someone like DeVos compares education to choosing between Uber, Lyft and a taxi, and never stops to consider the people who ride public transit, bike, or walk, that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding not only education but our larger society. Sure, for upper middle class parents with a neuro typical child school choice probably sounds great. Heck, in many cities it probably could be great. But what about the kids who don’t come from that mold, the ones who need extra support or who can excel in some ways, but struggle in others? What about the kids that are hard to teach, harder still to help because of family issues? I could get counseling in 6th grade when I needed it because that was an in school service. My son gets speech therapy because his access to education is mandated by law so the school has to provide the extras that he needs.

What happens after public ed is gutted? I understand the appeal of the myth of choice. After all, in a big city you’ll have lots of options. One of them will probably work out, but what about those with mobility issues who can only find a school on the other side of the city? That 2 hour bus ride doesn’t lend itself to successful outcomes. What about suburban and rural areas where there are only a handful of schools and none want to take on a kid who needs extra support? We’ve already seen that vouchers don’t fix the problem, that charter schools have not been the magic bullet either, in fact what we do know is that public ed works best when the funding isn’t subject to whims or dependent on test scores, when class sizes are small and the surrounding community is thriving.

Public education isn’t a handout, isn’t a gift given to the undeserving. It is an investment by a society into itself, and into its future. It’s one of the cornerstones of a healthy community, and behind all the smoke and mirrors, what’s on offer is a poisoned pill. It’s shiny, it sounds great in a distant way when you don’t think too hard about much funding public schools have lost to create this option. When you don’t ask yourself about the limits of the schools that are “better” because classrooms still have finite space, and what happens when those schools run out of space, and there are still kids that need an education, but now their local school has been gutted because the already threadbare budget has collapsed?

We have to think beyond the immediate, beyond the children in our house and think about what’s good for all children. Or we end up backing policies that will help some kids in the very short term and ruin access for most kids in the long term. A well funded well run public school system remains the best of all possible options for all possible children.

She was out with friends at a neighborhood restaurant when someone in her crew got in an argument with someone else. That someone else left the restaurant, returned with a gun, and attempted to murder everyone within 200 feet. The bullet shattered her femur. She had extensive physical therapy. Her mother, desperate to escape the violence, moved her to Milwaukee several months later.

The day after the shooting, my sister made it to Page 3 of the Chicago Tribune. She was the unidentified 14 year-old girl. Not much else was written about it. My sister was lucky, if you could call it that. We don’t know what happened to the gunman. It’s possible a more sinister fate may have befallen him, and person responsible for murdering our brother.

It’s important to point out here that most of the people raving about Chiraq are not from here or have barely traveled south of Roosevelt Street.

Despite my reservations about the film, I walked over to the neighborhood theater to see it. For 118 minutes I rolled my eyes, exchanged exasperated looks with my husband, and shifted uncomfortably in my seat. The laughs were few and far between. The audible groans weren’t. I left the theater wondering if Lee realized his movie contradicted nearly everything he’s said on his press tour.

It isn’t entirely awful. It is a clumsy attempt by an obnoxious outsider to make sense of something we have struggled to understand for years. But it is not earnest. It is not heartfelt. It is hamfisted. It is exploitive. Most of all, it is dishonest. And it’s the dishonesty that really bothers me. When Lee tells an interviewer that “we [black people] must be vocal on both sides” he erases the work of people who have been here. It is a slap in the face to every person who has lit a candle for a slain child. It is an insult to every person who has marched through their neighborhood to keep the peace.

And he knows it. You can see it in the scenes between Angela Bassett’s Miss Helen and Teyonah Paris’ Lysistrata, where Miss Helen masterfully explains how a combination of urban renewal and City Hall apathy can create a climate in which twenty people are shot in one weekend. You can see it in Father Corridan’s emotional eulogy, in which he, too, emphasizes the political apathy both locally and nationally. You see it as extras with cardboard signs crowd around a grieving Jennifer Hudson as she implores the public to put down the guns and help find her daughter’s killer. Perhaps, had Lee chosen these bits for the trailer instead of subjecting us to Paris instructing her fellow female warriors to Bundy Bounce their way to peace while Cannon gracelessly attempts to ride a beat, the movie wouldn’t have caused such a stir. But Lee loves controversy, and never misses an opportunity to start some shit, even if it detracts from his work.

The movie ends just as awkwardly as it began, with warring factions calling a truce after falling to the power of the vajayjay and being rewarded with jobs and a brand new trauma center, the things the aforementioned People Who Have Been Here have fought to receive for years. It is a message steeped in politics of respectability. It is a tired song, with an even more tired refrain, and you are not better for hearing it. You are not better for watching it. You do not leave the auditorium inspired by what you’ve seen. You leave it frustrated. Bewildered. Waylaid. As we exited a theater one white woman said it was one of the best Spike Lee movies she’s seen; it is clear her bar is somewhere below the seventh circle of Hell.

But once she said it, I understood why so many folks–ones not of color–loved it so much. It absolves them of responsibility, placing the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of those suffering the most. They don’t have to examine their complicity in a system designed to destroy black and brown people. With this film, Lee has given them permission to let themselves off the hook while wagging their fingers at our dysfunction. It is the film’s sole accomplishment.

When Britteney Kapri broke down her issues with the film last month, it was a perfect articulation of everything most of us were thinking. “I don’t hate you,” she writes toward the end. “I just don’t trust you with my grief.” She shouldn’t. None of us should. This is one love letter Spike really could’ve kept to himself.

A tweet of mine had found its way into a Washington Post op-ed calling for the dismissal of University of Missouri professors accused of assaulting students at a rally celebrating the resignation of the school president. Normally, this wouldn’t bother me; I’d grown accustomed to journalists using my tweets in their stories without giving me so much as a heads up (which usually leaves me open to trolling), and my Twitter account has never been private. But, as I’d spent the last 48 hours ridding my mentions of trolls wanting to debate First Amendment rights and freedom of the press, I was in no mood to entertain any more, and there was something about this particular post that stunk.

When WaPo blogger Erik Wemple couldn’t get in contact with one of the professors he decided to publicly shame, he used a source that provided him with a screenshot of that professor’s locked Twitter account. They were a handful of fairly innocuous retweets from myself and several other black writers commenting on the press’s inability to handle the Mizzou protesters with care. (More on the rather interesting optics of this later.) We don’t know who the source is, because Wemple is protecting them. We don’t see any actual tweets from the professor himself to put those retweets into context. When I reached out to Wemple, he claimed the retweets provided insight into the professor’s thoughts. And when I asked about the use of the screencaps, Wemple responded:

So, I sent a letter raising my concerns to Wemple’s editor, James Downie. This was his response:

(To Downie’s credit, he apologized for misgendering me on Twitter.)

According to Wemple and Downie, the professor’s 390 Twitter followers negated any expectation of privacy he may have had. Since the professor didn’t make himself available to be interviewed, Wemple was well within his rights as a reporter to use the screencaps of the professor’s private account the source had provided as a statement, of sorts. I’m not sure what the reader was supposed to glean from this, other than the professor’s proficiency at using the “Retweet” button. In any case, it has left the professor open to another wave of trolls and undesirables ready to harass him and call for his head.

Twitter — and the tweets of private citizens being public domain — has long been a point of contention. While Hamilton Nolan’s snide declaration in Gawker last year may have served as the definitive answer for many working journalists, it might have also contributed to the rapid erosion of public trust. But there’s something about Nolan’s post that’s worth noting:

“If you do not want your Twitter to be public, you can make it private. Then it will not be public. If you do not make it private, it will be public.”

The professor did, in fact, make his account private. He did not intend for anyone beyond his 390 followers to see those tweets. He had, in fact, an expectation of privacy, which was violated by Erik Wemple and the Washington Post.

This isn’t the first time a journalist or a blogger has exercised questionable judgment in pursuit of pageviews. Last week, American Conservative blogger Rod Dreher published the locked tweets of a theologian he was briefly obsessed with taking down. (I won’t link to the exact post out of privacy for her, but it remains up for the world to see.) It is unclear whether Dreher followed her on Twitter himself, or if he, like Wemple, had an eager source willing to do his dirty work.

Makerbase Co-Founder and CEO Anil Dash highlights the problem with treating the tweets of private citizens like those of public figures in his Medium essay, “What Is Public?” An excerpt:

“It has so quickly become acceptable practice within mainstream web publishing companies to reuse people’s tweets as the substance of an article that special tools have sprung up to help them do so. But inside these newsrooms, there is no apparent debate over whether it’s any different to embed a tweet from the President of the United States or from a vulnerable young activist who might not have anticipated her words being attached to her real identity, where she can be targeted by anonymous harassers.”

In March 2014, BuzzFeed reporter Jessica Testa published an “article” comprised mainly of tweets she’d curated from a Twitter discussion that user Steenfox kicked off about sexual assault.

That article, and subsequent outrage became part of a larger debate surrounding the way journalists use tweets. According to Steenfox, Testa had not gotten her permission to use her face or her image in the story.

A subject as touchy as the one Steenfox and her followers were discussing requires a lot of care in reporting. The people sharing their stories were survivors of sexual assault, and deserved to have both their identities and their dignities protected.

Openly publishing the names and faces of those participating in the discussion for an article clearly meant to garner links for BuzzFeed was completely irresponsible, and opened them up for further attacks and harassment, as Steenfox said she experienced herself.

Her photo went viral, finding its way onto the Facebook feed of her younger brother.

Of Testa, Steenfox said, “For all she knows, my abuser could have found me. What if I was trying to hide from that person?”

Steenfox, and many others whose tweets were included in the story, felt exposed. It’s one thing to send out a tweet to an audience of a couple hundred people. Fox has a very large following, but her 17,000 followers in no way matches the reach of a site with millions of viewers per day.

Exposing a story to that size of an audience, especially one that may not necessarily had been granted to BuzzFeed, is dangerous and irresponsible journalism.

For her part, McBride based her opinionated article on a false premise. She misunderstood why Steenfox was angry, and used as a source one of Steenfox’s tweets in which Fox was addressing Testa for not having gotten her permission.

The entire thing turned into a nightmare for Steenfox, who had people in her mentions accusing her of wanting ownership of public tweets and being upset that her “Twitter moment was gone.”

All Steenfox wanted was her privacy to be respected. At the time, she maintained a public Twitter account with over 10,000 followers. And though she understood what she was doing when she posited the question to her audience, she never intended for that audience to grow hundreds of times over in the span of one night.

The idea that tweets are public and therefore open to be seen by everyone is an argument that is used all the time in these situations, but that argument lacks nuance.

What many of these journalists fail to grasp is that a person tweeting to a small audience may very well understand that the public tweets are subject to being shared and seen by a larger audience, but the type of exposure that comes when a larger media outlet shares your story in no way compares to 100 people on your timeline retweeting your tweet.

Consider the example of the infamous Zola, who took to Twitter to share a cautionary tale of hookers, strippers, pimps, mayhem, and murder.

After the story was retweeted hundreds of times, Zola deleted the tweets from her account, but not before they had been captured via screenshots and saved to various Imgur accounts.

When larger media outlets picked up the story, nearly none bothered to attempt to track down Zola or verify the facts of the story. Most simply provided cheeky, borderline insulting writeups, linking to screenshots others had posted.

Only WaPo’s Caitlin Dewey sought the facts behind the tale. She tracked down the parties involved, even finding others who had been in similar situations with Jess and ‘Z’, the latter turning out to be a real-life pimp currently facing charges of human trafficking, among other things.

Zola has become something of a cult hero, with movie directors contacting her about a possible dramatization of her story.

Others who have had their tweets shared on large media outlets without their knowledge have not been so lucky. Many have suffered harassment, ridicule, and in some cases, unemployment. These are things they didn’t sign up for.

The Society of Professional Journalists addresses the need for journalists to exhibit compassion in its code of ethics under the heading Minimize Harm:

What Wemple, Testa, and other journalists have done defies the ethical code. They have chosen to hide behind the idea that posting it in a public forum makes it fair game.

The time for a new code of ethics in journalism is now. In the age of new media, with so many reporters opting to do their research on the Twitter and Facebook feeds of private citizens instead of going out and doing the digging on their own, new rules must be set in place to train journalists how to handle situations like these when they arise.

(Part Two will take a closer look at the consequences of having a tweet go viral, and what happens when it nearly costs you your job.)

I don’t write much anymore. Not because I don’t want to write. Not because there isn’t enough time. But in this fast-paced world of hot takes, it has become increasingly difficult to keep up. I realize that I am not a hot take kinda girl. I am for the measured, contemplative essay, one that takes great care to craft. Some are able to pull that off daily, and God bless ’em. I can’t do it. My heart isn’t in it. I write when the spirit compels me, when something has moved me so deeply that I am wide awake at 1:30 in the morning banging, on my Macbook Pro in the quiet of my living room.

Today, it is Sandra Bland, the woman who allegedly committed suicide in a Texas jail cell earlier this week. And the Black Lives Matter protest at Netroots Saturday morning. And the criticism of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new release. And how, in one way or another, they all intersect.

Sandra Bland spent the latter part of brief life advocating for preservation of black lives. Her family remembers her as a brilliant, vivacious woman, a woman fighting to change the world, or her corner of it. She used social media to speak out against police violence. A Chicago Blackhawks fan, her final tweets are ones asking fellow fans to join her in prayer for the Charleston Nine. She is the second person in three years to allegedly commit suicide while in custody of the Waller County, Texas, authorities. She is the sixth black woman in 2015 to die during a police encounter. She is the 13th black woman (that we know of) to die since 2014. Sandra Bland’s case is one of the very few to see widespread media attention; usually when the victim is black and female the story is quietly filed away, until a news story needs a statistic, or a thinkpiece needs an tragic anecdote. Perhaps, because in Sandra Bland, we have the perfect victim. A respectable victim. An educated, socially conscious victim. She is not too young, or too old. She could easily be the girl from the old neighborhood, or the sister making plates at the family picnic, or the girl you politely smiled at as you crossed paths in the frozen food aisle at Mariano’s.

Sandra Bland means that the stories of black women felled at the hands of police can no longer be erased. No longer can we write off black female victims as troubled ne’er-do-wells condemned to their fates. No longer can we blame incomplete narratives on the lack of public interest. Her story is in our face, her final moment of life a viral video, her brief existence a Sunday morning show talking point. So when a Black Lives Matter activist disrupts a presidential candidate forum to declare “no more erasure,” you are compelled to pay attention. And it will make you uncomfortable. That’s the point. There is no room for politeness when your life is on the line. There is no hey, um, if you could um, just give me a minute… because we’ve tried that before and got nowhere. This is as urgent as a motherfucker.

News reports covering Saturday’s action have described it as “heckling,” the presidential candidates “shouted down.” or “interrupted and derailed” by BLM. Social media reaction was just as damning, with many white progressives wondering (aloud, of course) why black activists would disrupt politicians at a convention specifically created for…activists. Many black people who have attended Netroots will attest to having that “fly in the buttermilk” feeling. They will regale you with tales of bizarre microaggressions and polite liberal racism. They will speak of the organization’s lip service to diversity, and its struggles to be more inclusive. Which is why that BLM action was necessary, why the sight of a black woman standing between two white male presidential hopefuls, demanding to be seen, demanding accountability, was powerful. Sure, white progressives can try to dismiss this protest as an immature attention-grab, but when a white male presidential hopeful (one with a questionable track record on race relations) responds to Tia Oso’s question with “Black Lives matter, white lives matter, all lives matter” the disconnect is clear. And when Tia Oso is met with scorn and derision from white progressives, the disconnect is clear. And when Bernie Sanders cancels a meeting with black activists, perhaps to signal disapproval, the disconnect is clear.

It is necessary, then, to continue to speak up about erasure, even if it means criticizing those we respect. Last week saw the release of Ta-Nehisi Coates new book, Between the World and Me; many met the new release with praise, including Toni Morrison, who compared The Atlantic writer to Baldwin. It is something when one of the world’s most revered writers compares your work to that of another literary giant. The accolades, of course, aren’t unwarranted. I’ve been a fan since his Village Voice days, and have had spirited debates with good friends on the merits of his work. Coates is a beautiful storyteller, an earnest intellectual who readily admits when he’s wrong, and takes great care to get it right. And when a friend did come with criticism, he took it. Instead of making it about himself, or his feelings, he simply responded “you’re right.”

And that’s really all we want. Acknowledgement. For our voices to be heard, our pain felt. To not be shouted down, or told to wait our turn. It is possible to bite your tongue so hard it bleeds, to hold in a scream for so long that the body and spirit and soul breaks down. A demand for accountability shouldn’t be met with paternalism and jeers. A moment of legitimate anger shouldn’t be dismissed as an ill-timed tantrum. We are here. Present. Visible. Loud. And we aren’t going anywhere.

(De Ana J is writer and sometimes smartass from Southern California. She podcasts for Nerdgasm Noire, writes for Arsenal for Democracy and acts out on Twitter as @NaniCoolJ. You can also sometimes catch her on her blog www.nerdygirlswag.com.)

Weeks ago in McKinney, Texas the police were called about a disturbance at a neighborhood pool party. In one of the many viral videos, there’s an officer running around cursing at teenagers – mostly Teens of Color. In the video you distinctly hear them ask why they were being detained and why they were being told to leave a party to which they’d been invited. Notably, they were asking politely. A bikini-clad girl looking for one of her friends is told to leave with another group of girls; as they leave, the officer becomes upset and grabs the girl, slamming her to the ground multiple times, while her friends ask why she’s being arrested. When her friends attempt to help her, the officer pulls a gun on the group.

Aside from the obvious racism, it’s important to pay attention to the racialized misogyny (misogynoir) that also takes place. Looking at the videos, it’s clear to see that the officer, David Eric Casebolt, was being excessive in his attack on the girl, Dajerria Becton. It’s scary to see a grown man be so violent towards any small, bikini-clad 14 year old girl – the officer treats Miss Becton as if she were a much bigger, much stronger person. It’s even more alarming when you realize that Casebolt was specifically targeting teens of color.

If that girl hadn’t already learned before — if any of those teens hadn’t already learned before — they learned that day that being Black in public is considered a threat to the police. Even if you’re doing nothing wrong. Even if you’re only 14. Even if you obviously have no weapon. Even if you are polite.

If a group of teens can have the police called on them for being at a pool party they were invited to, the problem isn’t them — it’s the belief that simply because they are there they are causing trouble. This is especially true for Black girls, who have to live at the intersection of racism and sexism that denies them their girlhood. As is evident from the altercation that got police called to the neighborhood in the first place.

In a YouTube video, Tatyana Rhodes describes how two white women at the pool were cursing at the teens at the party before the police arrived. She states that, initially, a younger white girl objected to the slurs the two white women. They began to curse at her, and when Tatyana spoke out against the women’s language, they initiated a fight. In both this incident and the officer subsequently slamming Dajerria to the ground, we see White adults attacking Black teenagers, ignoring their right to personal safety.

The “pro-police” reaction to the event has been cliche. Those who believe Casebolt was justified in violently assaulting a teenage girl use the same excuses as those used for all unwarranted abuses towards Black people. They say that the children were the problem and if they’d only acted more respectfully towards the police and residents they wouldn’t have been in this situation. This point of view completely ignores how polite the teens were as they were being detained by police and the fact that it was White adults who initially antagonized them for just being Black in public.

We’ve been told non-violent protests in the form of marches and boycotts in the 1960s magically changed the minds of the majority of White people and then racism ended. Because of this fairytale, the US has failed to unpack actual issues of systemic racism and the lingering effects of racist stereotypes that have developed since slavery.

This failure combined with sexist attitudes is especially harmful for Black women and girls. Even as teenagers, any break in respectable behavior is treated as a threat and the responses to these perceived threats is almost immediately violence. We’re not afforded the luxury of girlhood. If Black girls were regarded by society the way it views White American girls, it would reveal this violence against us to be as horrible as it actually is, for all to see.

The fact that so many are making excuses for violence against this girl shows they do not view her as a girl the way they would a white 14-year-old in the same situation. It is also almost certainly no coincidence that the cop targeted her with this extreme force while leaving the White teenage girls at the party alone, and only handcuffing but not roughing up those siding with their Black friends against out-of-control adults.

Unfortunately, this lack of girlhood affects the way adult Black women are treated as well. Recently, after another public outing of Bill Cosby’s sexual assaults on women, Beverly Johnson opened up to Essence magazine about being assaulted by Bill Cosby. Her story matched the stories of the other women who were brave enough to tell them, yet Mrs. Johnson was called a liar (among other things) and her despite her own successful career, people were quick to dismiss her and defame her character. Many saying that Beverly was trying to take down a prominent Black figure and therefore hurting Black people as a whole, while ignoring how harm to Black women also hurts Black people.

This isn’t just a race issue, this isn’t just a feminist issue, this is both. Black girls should be allowed the same safety and protection as their White counterparts.

(Riley is a disabled Black non-binary femme in his late 20s. He is a CS and math student in NYC with history in art, music and writing, looking to complete the holy quadrilateral of creative capability with tech skills.)

I’m really tired of the bullshit, so let’s get down to brass tacks. I’m Black. I’m trans. I think I know a little about race and transgender issues by now.

Caitlyn Jenner comes out as transgender, and people think that comments like “if Caitlyn Jenner can change genders, why can’t Rachel Dolezal change her race?”

It’s very simple.

Trans people have historically experienced violence.

Note that I have not said “men” or “women” have experienced violence. Specifically, transgender individuals have a long history of suffering, abuse, poverty and murder caused by their transitioning and transgender status.

In other words, the act of being trans itself is brings violence, not simply the act of being simply a man or a woman.

Caitlyn Jenner submitted herself to a lifetime of this violence when she came out. Statistics have shown that the rate of violence against trans people, and particularly trans women, is particularly high. Earlier this year, a number of Black and Latina trans women were violently murdered, a fact most didn’t even realize.

There is no history, tracking, record, or give-a-damn for murders of white people “race-transitioning” (a term I use tongue-in-cheek, here) to Black. I don’t even think there’s a single record of such. There are records of murder against Black people, but it is not the act of “race-transitioning” from white to Black that yields violence…not to mention there is not much of a record on this, if any at all.

Because the transitioning is the crux of the violence, being trans produces in a lowering of status in the eyes of the respective group one transitions to.

Trans men are not accepted wholly as men amongst cisgender men. Trans women are certainly not accepted wholly as women by cis women, they’re often barely considered human beings, considered rapists and pedophiles and are ostracized from women communities while being abused in male communities. However, cis women accept other cis women’s womanhood. Cis men accept other cis men’s manhood. Non-binary people, as you can see here, don’t really exist on this extreme scale at all, and have no real place.

Rachel Dolezal went from being a mediocre white woman with no identity to the prize of a Black community. As a group, we treasure light skin, pale eyes, blond hair, and the “biracial look”, which Rachel Dolezal pretended being. Black people more than anyone else are accepting, and those who are pale as chalk and 99.9% white can get in if they claim a bit of Blackness, making it easy for Dolezal to slip in past the doors and achieve a position in the Black community that trans women are not afforded in the woman community, nor trans men afforded in the man community. By penetrating Blackness like a virus, she attained a teaching position in Africana Studies, teaching numerous classes, she ripped away positions from Black people who have trouble getting the foot in the door at these universities. Black people, who are already overwhelmingly living in poverty were passed up by someone passing themselves off as light skin. She was exalted and held above the people she imitated, an experience that white people have no matter where they go in the world, no matter what culture they invade and overtake, whiteness and white features are loved and desired in PoC communities, assuring her seat of power amongst them.

But cis men and women are not passed over for jobs because trans people exist. Many trans women can’t find jobs at all. Trans men and trans women are not considered more attractive than cis men and women, respectively, and there is no desire, want or love of trans people in the cis community. They do not receive quarter there for having transitioned!

Race isn’t the same as gender.

On its face, it’s very easy to make some weak comparisons between trans-racial (a term actually used to describe adoption) and transgender, the idea of changing oneself overall, the thought processes that go into desperately wanting to be something people tell you that you aren’t. But once we get down to the specifics, we find differences that split the two wide apart.

Race is determined and experienced differently from gender.

Race, today, in the US in 2015? Is based on some bits and bobs and what your face looks like, the slope of your nose, the size of your lips, the shape of your eyes, the exact tone of your skin and curl pattern of your hair, your history and your ancestry. Many have come into their race as an identity, but there are plenty of situations wherein your race as determined by ancestry is completely different from your race as determined by your looks. Furthermore, it’s not only your looks, but how the racial class in power view and translate those looks.

In other words, race has history, but what determines one’s actual racial station is imposed. It’s not affected by how one acts or thinks, or how they adorn themselves. It comes from an external source. That is its history and has been since its inception.

Gender in a colonialist transphobic society may be based entirely on what bits you have when born (and if you don’t fit into two categories you are often violently altered until you do), but this is not the historical crux of gender, as this thing determined by a vapid declaration of one thing or another. One’s biological ancestral history has no effect on one’s gender; you are not your gender because your parents and grandparents were that gender. Gender is internal, and comes from the self, and that is its history, clearly displayed in a long line of various genders that have existed in PoC communities since the beginning of time. Thus, as it is internal, one’s own thoughts become relevant to one’s gender, and this simply isn’t true of race.

The respective communities are affected differently.

One suffers, the other experiences no difference at all.

What matters is the privilege dynamic. Cis women are not in any way deprived or damaged by Caitlyn Jenner or any other trans woman. The only person who stands to suffer is Caitlyn herself, whether or not the privileged community of cis women supports her, as a person who stands at the marginalized end of this stick.

But most of the people who don’t support Rachel Dolezal are those that Rachel Dolezal oppresses. People she’s stolen from. People her existences harms. Her presence does not leave the lives of actual Black women intact, it robs them of enrichment. When outed, white people defended her. They tried to call attention to potential mental illness, they told angry Black people to leave her alone and let her live. Black men who hate Black women defended her, Black men who oppress Black women and often demonize Black women. Non-Black people of color flew from their caves to come and tell Black women to “leave Rachel alone”, to “let her be what she wants”, and tried to assert their own definition of Blackness on the people who live its reality!

The oppression that Black women already face was pronounced by Rachel Dolezal. Increased. Once more, pro-injustice from sites-that-shall-not-be-named came to renew and refresh their abuse of Black women on social media.

This did not happen to cis women when Caitlyn Jenner came out.

Rachel Dolezal was happily welcomed into a community based on recreating a background that didn’t exist. Her white features earned her spaces that were meant for Black women, a group of people she oppresses. In addition, she has tried to exercise that power against Black women by announcing that she doesn’t believe they should be given a platform to speak if they don’t buy her story. She dresses in a marginalized costume, but she then says that Black people who don’t side with her lies don’t deserve a place. A place that her white body is only able to fill because whiteness, lightness are treasured in all communities.

Anyone can be transgender. But only white people can change their race.

If a person determined irrevocably Black by white people tried to smooth into their society as Rachel Dolezal has done to Black people, the only thing that will happen is…well, historically, death. In modern times, ridicule, ableism in the form of insistence that it is a mental illness that should be medicated or hospitalized, or flat out ignoring it.

There would be no discussions. No conversations. At best, humoring the idea. Certainly no defense of such.

If a person determined irrevocably Black by white people tried to smooth into ANY other race as Rachel Dolezal has done, the same thing would happen. Hell, Black people who are multiracial are often forcibly delegated to the “just Black” category regardless of their history!

This is not an identity. It is simply an extension of white privilege to include the capacity to become other races freely, something that is afforded to no one else.

Rachel Dolezal flat out lied about her life and her experiences, and not to protect herself, but to protect the benefits she received and the space she acquired through those lies. She lied to protect her privilege, a trait of white people and all privileged groups. Her life could have been the same had she merely remained the white woman she was. White people already devour space in Black communities as a bonus of their whiteness, but she chose to take her farce further, becoming a “Black” woman who happened to be indistinguishable from the party in power.

There is no benefit to being transgender, and there is no harm, but there is every benefit and harm to a white person picking a less privileged race to join because white features are privileged in every race and identification has no effect on that.

Caitlyn Jenner is now being treated as a woman, and as a trans woman, and receiving every detriment of those two identities with no mal-effect on cis women, but Rachel Dolezal is still being protected and defended as white women are, to the suffering of the Black women she pretended to be. White people can reap the benefits of relative privilege in the PoC community they choose to inhabit, PoC can never, ever do the reverse. Rachel Dolezal lived her “Black life” centered and important in Black spaces, and trans women will NEVER be centered in women’s spaces, nor will trans men be centered in men’s spaces, and non-binary people will float in a void between the two groups.

There is a difference between recognizing a fact about oneself based on an identity aspect that is internal, like gender, something that harms no one, something where anyone can transition and become trans and deal with a similar set of experiences, versus joining a group of oppressed people and shoving them out of it, a privilege only afforded to white people, an “identity” that is at its crux nothing but white supremacy.